Category Archives: History of Medicine

Two Words for Halloween: Scary Clowns!

Cover of Merchant’s Gargling Oil Dream and Fate, Palmistry, &c. Songster, Lockport, NY, ca. 1880-1890s.

We’ve seen many advertising campaigns of yesteryear here at the Rubenstein Library, thanks to the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History.  Our History of Medicine Collections contain many examples of promotional items for patent medicines and related remedies.  And the Library holds an extensive collection of American songsters, or ephemeral booklets of song lyrics popular in the nineteenth century.  But never have we seen more terrifying examples of any of these genres than the Merchant’s Gargling Oil Songsters, which feature scary clowns on their covers.

We have the Merchant’s Gargling Oil Co. to thank for these frightful specimens.  The Hagley Museum and Library’s online exhibit on patent medicines tells us that the oil was “primarily used as a topical ointment to treat horses and other animals for burns, scalds, sprains, and bruises,” but could also be used to treat other odd ailments, from foot rot to mange.  The oil was not, apparently, gargled.

We know what you’re asking: why use scary clowns to promote veterinary medicine?  We presume that the clowns used to promote the Merchant’s Gargling Oil Liniment were not intentionally scary.   Perhaps they were not creepy at all to the nineteenth-century eye, but rather appeared amusing, colorful, and whimsical.  However, the fact that these particular songsters combined popular song lyrics with instruction on dream interpretation and fortune telling lends itself to the belief that there’s more to these clowns than meets the eye. Not to mention the owl on the shoulder of one of the clowns, and the deranged look in the eyes of the other.

Cover of Merchant’s Gargling Oil Songster, Lockport, NY, ca. 1880-1890s.

We wouldn’t want to meet either of these clowns on a dark Halloween night, but you’re welcome to come see them in person in the Library’s reading room… if you dare. Happy Halloween!

Post contributed by Will Hansen, Assistant Curator of Collections. 

 

Susan Reverby to Lecture on “Escaping Melodramas”

Date: Thursday, November 1, 2012
Time: Lecture begins at 5:30 p.m.; Reception to follow
Location: Gothic Reading Room, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, NC
Contact information: Rachel Ingold at (919) 684-8549 or rachel.ingold@duke.edu

 

Please join the History of Medicine Collections for our fall lecture to be held on Thursday, November 1, at 5:30 pm in the Gothic Reading Room. Susan Reverby, PhD, will be presenting on “Escaping Melodramas: Reflections on Telling the Histories of the Public Health Service’s Research in Tuskegee and Guatemala.” Susan Reverby is a historian of American women, medicine, and nursing, and is the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College.

She has written one book and edited a second on the Tuskegee Syphilis study (1932-72), the longest running non-therapeutic research study in U.S. history that involved the United States Public Health Service and more than 600 African American men in the counties surrounding Tuskegee, Alabama. Her scholarship has appeared in a broad range of publications from scholarly journals to editorials in the popular press. Professor Reverby speaks widely on the history of gender, ethics, and health care issues.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Department of History, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and the History of Medicine.

Controversy vs. Benefits: Vivisection Items in the History of Medicine Collections

As a volunteer for the History of Medicine (HOM) Collections, one of my projects was to create subject guides for several of the Collections’ strengths. I focused on collection strengths in areas of anesthesia, human sexuality, materia medica, pediatrics, psychiatry, vivisection, and yellow fever. I spent the past few weeks gathering sources and images to highlight the HOM’s interesting collection of vivisection materials, many of which come from the large vivisection pamphlet collection.

A significant amount of the collection features philosophical debates between those who regard surgery on live animals for experimental purposes as cruelty and those who support vivisection for benefits stemming from progress and advancements in medical science (e.g., creation of immunizations and vaccines).

Many photographs and drawings in the vivisection pamphlet collection show how dogs were used as test subjects for medical experiments. In one photograph, it is evident from its posture that a dog that had its pituitary gland removed is undergoing discomfort; the image was taken hours before its death. In another drawing, a dog appears to have had its hind legs bound and one of its forelegs sealed. The caption underneath reads, “They who know the pain of a limb even a short time in a cramped position can imagine the sufferings of this dog.”

 

On the other hand, animal experimentation has played a crucial role in helping to develop immunizations against infectious diseases, such as polio and diphtheria. The photographs below feature children whose lives were saved by antitoxin discovered through medical research using animals. In an attempt to appeal to people’s emotions and gain acceptance for animal experimentation, one of the captions contains a suggestion for others to imagine their own child as one of the pictured victims of infantile paralysis. The question is asked, “Would you hesitate to sacrifice under ether one or more animals if through the knowledge gained the disease could have been prevented, or your child could have recovered without being crippled?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vivisection controversy brings up other provocative questions: Is animal experimentation justifiable if it results in the possibility of a cure/immunization/vaccine for a disease (e.g., cancer, HIV/AIDS)? Do the benefits of eradicating diseases for humans outweigh the suffering and pain caused to animals in medical research? Does the use of anesthesia make vivisection more acceptable? Are there parallels between animal vivisection and human vivisection as historically conducted by the Nazi and Imperial Japanese armies? Come examine the materials in the History of Medicine Collections and develop your own conclusions.

Post contributed by Christine Cheng, former volunteer for the History of Medicine Collections. Christine is now the Research Services Coordinator for George Mason University Libraries Special Collections & Archives.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

Happy Friday! Preparing for our upcoming renovation continues at the Rubenstein. This book’s title made us giggle, especially considering the high temperatures we’ve been facing lately in Durham. If you’d like to learn more about Spontaneous Combustion: A Literary Curiosity, you can check out the catalog record. It is a 1937 medical publication discussing cases of spontaneous combustion in literature.

For more photos of our favorite renovation discoveries, visit the Rubenstein’s Flickr page.

New Acquisitions Week, Day Five: Exploring Africa

We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012.  Two newly acquired selections have been featured in a post every day this week.  All of these amazing resources are available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!

  • Livio Sanuto, Geografia: This work, published in 1588 in Venice, is the first edition of the first printed atlas of Africa.  It contains twelve double-page engraved maps showing the continent; for its date, the maps are surprisingly detailed and accurate, correcting many of the earlier errors in French and German maps.  Nevertheless, Sanuto also kept many preconceived European notions about Africa, and introduced new errors in the text of the atlas, making the work a fascinating case study of European views of Africa in the sixteenth century.  The work is foundational for the study of European depictions of Africa, and will be a cornerstone for African collections in the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American History and Culture.
Map of southern Africa, from Livio Sanuto, Geografia (1588).
  • Ezekiel Skinner Papers: Ezekiel Skinner (1777-1855) was a missionary and physician who worked in Monrovia, Liberia for the American Colonization Society during the 1830s. Although almost 60 years old, Skinner believed it was his duty to continue the work of his son, Benjamin Rush Skinner (named for the famous physician Benjamin Rush, under whom Ezekiel had studied), who had died in Liberia a few years before. The papers contain correspondence and other documents written by Dr. Skinner during his time in Liberia, including a description of a “slave factory” and other details of the slave trade, and discussion of medical treatment of Liberian colonists, including treatment of a fellow doctor, the African-American Charles Webb.  The Skinner papers enrich the collections of both the John Hope Franklin Research Center and the History of Medicine Collections.

Previous posts:

New Acquisitions Week, Day One: Moveable Brains and Laughing Cows

We’re celebrating the beginning of a new fiscal year with a week’s worth of new acquisitions from the first half of 2012.  Two newly acquired selections will be featured in a post every day this week.  All of these amazing resources will be available for today’s scholars, and for future generations of researchers in the Rubenstein Library!

Diagram of the brain, from Ludwig Fick, Phantom des Menschenhirns (1885).
  • Joy Golden Papers: Joy Golden was a well-known advertising copywriter who started her own creative company, Joy Radio, in the 1980s that specialized in humorous radio advertising. She did a series of commercials for Laughing Cow Cheese that became particularly well known.  She also was active in the Friars Club, including holding the position of Governor.  Her papers include files related to her work in advertising from the 1960s forward, and audiotapes of many of the radio advertisements created by her company.  Her papers add to the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History‘s rich collections on women and advertising and the development of radio advertising.

 

 

Peeking at Paris in 1841: The Private Journal of Thomas R. Spencer

There’s something satisfying about reading a journal, and I don’t think it has much to do with the fact that a lot of journals try to discourage readers from exploring their contents, either. Instead, what I think appeals to me about journals is the familiar and candid tone of an author writing to him or herself. It’s thrilling to feel like the secret confidante of someone whom you’ve never met. There’s a lot of honesty in a journal, and that honesty transcends time to resonate with people totally outside of the context of the author’s life.

I’ve been privileged to work with the History of Medicine Collection in the Rubenstein Library this semester, and in the course of my project came across the journals of a young American medical student living in Paris, France in the early 1840s. Before I had really been able to familiarize myself with the contents of the journals – barriers mainly being Spencer’s handwriting – I imagined that the writing would be fraught with tales of the revolutions and political upheaval that characterized French politics in the 19th Century. What I found instead, though, was a window into the daily life of a bright, detail-oriented young medical student living in beautiful and romantic Paris, France even before the iconic Eiffel Tower was built.

The first entry in the journal is almost 30 pages long and describes a tour of Parisian monuments. Spencer starts with a jaunt around the grounds of the Palais des Tuileries and ends with a visit to the Arche de Triomphe on the Champs Elysées. When I said detail oriented, I was referring to things like the fact that Spencer recorded in yards the length and breadth of the Palais des Tuileries and described the arrangement and structure of the gardens there, too. The level of attention to detail, while surprising for a modern reader like yours truly, is likely because outside of recording the dimensions himself, Spencer would not easily be able to either recall or discover that information elsewhere. Another thing to remember is that photography hadn’t been really popularized yet, though it existed. 1840 is approximately contemporary with the birth of the Daguerrotype, an early photographic process. In 1840, if you wanted to remember something, you had to take down the facts yourself.

Even though it’s hard to imagine a Paris without the Eiffel Tower, some things in Spencer’s journals make him really accessible. For example, I was happy to find that he had an appreciation for puns; Spencer hearteningly described a fête happening down by the river as the “Seine of the action.” I totally LOL’d in the reading room at Perkins for that one, but then I do love a good pun.

The tidbits that make Spencer seems so contemporary exist right alongside descriptions of things that make his experiences totally foreign. He writes about doing rounds with a physician and watching amputations. As you might imagine, the practice of surgery has changed rather a lot since 1840. From Spencer’s descriptions, amputation was a considerable part of a surgeon’s practice at that time. Spencer also describes a side-show that he saw in Paris in terms of the various medical ailments that were afflicting the performers. Spencer recorded his ideas about what was wrong with the four-legged man and the level of approximate curvature of the spine of a man with dwarfism. I thought it was fascinating to see these people through the lens of his medical training. The journals also hold some botanical specimens that Spencer collected during his time in France. One of them makes an appearance in the image posted here.

The History of Medicine Collection has another later manuscript by Thomas Spencer, too. We learn from it that upon his return to the United States, he took up practice as a pathologist in Philadelphia, PA. The records from Spencer’s practice are taken with the same careful attention to detail and in the same beautiful script as his journals.

The journals tell what Spencer saw. They are his carefully collected memories from the two years he spent based in Paris. His experiences, which are so different from our own, lay out the scope of history, but his personality, humor, and opinions make him seem like a peer.

Nathalie Baudrand was the History of Medicine Collections Intern for Spring 2012 and is a graduate student at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science.

Dean Edward Buckley to speak on “The Future of Medicine”

Dean Edward Buckley will speak on The Future of Medicine

Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Time: 4:00 PM

Location: Biddle Rare Book Room, Perkins Library

Contact: Meg Brown, 919-681-2071 or meg.brown@duke.edu

Please join us on Wednesday, April 25, for a lecture by Dean Edward Buckley titled The Future of Medicine: Educating the Physician of 2020. Dr. Buckley is Vice Dean of Medical Education at the Duke University School of Medicine. The event will begin at 4 p.m. in the Biddle Rare Book Room of Perkins Library on Duke’s main campus.  All are welcome to attend; no registration is required. Light refreshments will be served.

The event celebrates the opening of the exhibition in the Perkins Library Gallery, What Does Your Doctor Know? Exploring the History of Physician Education from Early Greek Theory to the Practice of Duke Medicine.

Edward Halperin on Slave Medicine

Date: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Time: Light buffet supper at 5:30 PM; lecture begins at 6:00 PM
Location: Duke Medical Center Library, Room 102
Contact information:  Rachel Ingold, 919-684-8549 or rachel.ingold(at)duke.edu

Please join the Trent History of Medicine Society/Bullitt History of Medicine Club for its next speaker series event on Tuesday, April 10, 2012.  Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA, FACR, will be discussing “Slave Medicine and the Banality of Evil.”

Dr. Halperin received his undergraduate degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine, and a masters’ degree in Liberal Studies from Duke University.  He served on the faculty at Duke University for 23 years where he held endowed chairs in radiation oncology and medical education, and served as chairman of the department of radiation oncology and vice dean of the School of Medicine. In 2006, he was named Dean of the Medical School at the University of Louisville in Kentucky and Vice Provost of the University. As of May 1 this year, Dr. Halperin will begin as Chief Executive Officer and Chancellor for Health Affairs, Professor of Radiation Oncology, Pediatrics, and History, at New York Medical College and Provost for Biomedical Affairs at Touro College and University.

A Humble Petition from 1864

Greeting from 1864 Petition to Jefferson Davis from the Citizens of Cripple Creek, VA

Working on the History of Medicine (HOM) Trent Manuscripts Grant Project has revealed quite a few items of interest—but most recently, I discovered something that fits rather well into the Memories of the Civil War exhibit currently on display in the Perkins Exhibit Gallery.

Signatures to the 1864 Petition from the Citizens of Cripple Creek.
Signatures to the 1864 Petition from the Citizens of Cripple Creek. From the Trent Manuscripts Collection.

You may have seen the grisly amputation kit from the HOM collection, which might be the kind of war-related artifact that you would expect out of a collection on the history of medicine.  But here, instead, is not an example of progressive advances in medicine, nor a relic of past practice: instead, a simple plea for a family doctor to remain in service to his community by being excused for service in the Confederate Army:

“We the undersigned Citizens of Cripple Creek, Wythe County, VA earnestly petition that our family physician, Dr. C. C. Campbell, who is a conscript under the late act of Congress and whose services are indispensable to this portion of the county, be exempt, or detailed, and left with us.”

This singular petition to the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, dated February 15, 1864, was accompanied by two pages of signatures by the residents of Cripple Creek.  Did it ever reach its destination?  Do any historians or local residents know the fate of Dr. C. C. Campbell and his patients in Cripple Creek, Virginia?  If so, we’d love to hear from you!

Jacqueline Chapman, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, was History of Medicine Intern at the Rubenstein Library from September 2011 to January 2012.